"...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology. ... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. ... As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician’s paradise.” - Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, 1960.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Re "Alex Constantine Returns"

By Alex Constantine (Repost)

Once again, the Conservative Voice, a mine of ringing right-wing propaganda, is taking me to task for debunking the "Islamo-fascism" red herring.

Paul Krugman is correct: "There isn’t actually any such thing as Islamo-fascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination."http://neveryetmelted.com/index.php/no-islamofascism/

Neocons parroting Bush, badly in need of a dictionary, promote the "islamo-fascism" line, eg. Raymond Ibrahim, editor of the Al Qaeda Reader, a scary omelet of texts written by Islamic extremists; it compares the words of Al Qaeda to Mein Kampf.

It's fairly well-known, of course, that Horowitz receives generous funding from Richard Mellon Scaife - a CIA propagandist since the early days of the cold war. (The intelligence connection runs in the family: "During World War II, while Richard and Cordelia's father, Alan Scaife, served in Europe in the OSS, the forerunner to the CIA, the Scaife family lived in Washington."- http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/07news.html)

Scaife supports a phalanx of organizations that, like the FrontPage site, circulate fascist propaganda. They all have ties to the CIA:

Most of these CIA-subsidized propaganda machines are towing the "Islamo-Fascism" clunker. Krugman: " ... a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power — which aren’t even allies — pose a greater danger than Hitler’s panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did. ... "http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/29/krugman-no-such-thing-as-islamofascism/

Blogger Steve Benen comments, "The politics of fear might be more effective if it were grounded in reality."

Why point the finger at the Middle East, when actual fascism is corporate and would probably not exist without the capitalistic impetus that flows internationally from the United States?

Fascism is unbridled corporate control of government, military and propaganda functions - conceived in the west. Its propaganda only influences minds in the east, as it does everywhere else. It is an everyday feature of American life. It elevates thugs and criminals to positions of power. It is inherently conspiratorial and engages in acts of destruction to advance itself. It scapegoats "Islamo-fascists" - when American corporations in league with their corallaries in Germany, Japan, Italy, etc., make fascism possible and feed the geo-genocidal beast. The Middle East may have known Nazi collaborators, as did America itself, but make no mistake about it, the U.S. is the beating heart of it all.